Jay Kurland established a practice providing legal and financial advice to lottery winners. He is now being accused of deception. As the FBI began questioning his insta-millionaire clients, things were not looking good. The jackpots handed over to Jay Kurland by multiple winners seemed to be shrinking. On June 19, Kurland called his neighbor and business partner, Francis Smookler, saying his Staten Island clients were growing concerned. Kurland admitted to bad business moves but denied criminality. Kurland came to be America’s foremost lott0-winner whisperer. He was booked for morning shows and was known for thelotterylawyer.com and @lotterylawyer. In 2018, he started representing the biggest solo lottery winner of all time, a woman who’d bought a $1.5 billion ticket in South Carolina.
As Kurland accumulated more and richer clients, he started innovating to multiply clients’ money. He began dealing more in side hustles, and the list of people he worked with began to look a little different. There was Christopher Chierchio, who ran a Staten Island plumbing business and has been identified in the New York tabloids as a Genovese crime-family soldier; Greg Altieri, a wholesale jeweler turned Ponzi schemer; and Kurland’s own brother-in-law, Scott Blyer, aka DrBFixin, a cosmetic surgeon specializing in Brazilian butt lifts. The morning of August 18, 2020, saw the beginning of the end for this group, however. Kurland, Smookler, Russo, and Chierchio were booked on multiple counts of wire fraud and money laundering, accused of bilking three marquee lottery winners out of more than $100 million. Smookler and Russo were also accused of extortion. Federal prosecutors in New York laid out a scheme predicated on the trust Kurland had built with clients who were wildly unprepared for the opportunities and pitfalls of sudden wealth. Following Kurland’s investment advice, lottery winners plowed cash into high-interest lending businesses run by his associates, for which he allegedly received secret kickbacks.
Interested in speaking with an attorney? Call our office at 816-524-4949 or click here to schedule a consultation.